States step up push to lure innovators and investors

As economic development schemes go, hiring about 50 "eminent scholars" may sound modest. But in Georgia, that move is bearing fruit that may end up being more important than the peaches for which the state is known.

One example: Atlanta is home to high-tech company Lancope because a state program lured computer scientist John Copeland to the Georgia Institute of Technology. The seven-year-old company does not employ hundreds of people yet, but it does put the region at the forefront of a budding field of guarding computer networks by tracking user behavior.

Georgia's effort symbolizes an emerging focus by state governments on the economics of innovation. From Indiana to Arizona, a similar notion is taking root: in a competitive and fast-changing world, local prosperity depends on having strategies in place to stay at the forefront of new industries and ideas.

Some states, like Georgia, have been in this game for years, and local leaders have long sought to nurture new jobs, in part by forging links between universities and industry. But experts on economic development say governors are focusing on this issue with a new intensity (innovation is the theme of this year's annual meeting of governors, which began Saturday in Washington and runs through Tuesday).

"They've locked onto innovation as the key strategy for moving states into the future," says David Audretsch, director of the Institute for Development Strategies at Indiana University in Bloomington. "I don't think it's superficial."

Several forces are driving the trend.

The rise of China and India in recent years, like Japan's export success in the 1980s, has fanned concerns about America's ability to maintain its standard of living. It's not just about the loss of blue-collar jobs. It is also the worry that the emergent powers could soon compete with the US for the highest-skilled jobs as well.

Second, European nations are trying to ramp up their own innovation economies. They have an eye on the same threats from Asia, but generally lag behind the US in entrepreneurial activity.